Starbucks Pumpkin Scones

Out of all the tasty treats Starbucks offers my favorites are the Pumpkin and mini vanilla scones. Good Lord, they are so freaking good. So you can imagine my excitement when I saw this pin on Pinterest for the recipe. The first time I made them they were cakey and soft. They tasted good but weren't the texture a scone should be. So I went about changing and adapting the recipe until I finally got it right. The winning adaption is this recipe. I used coconut milk because I like it, but I'm sure any milk would work. Also, I have quit cooking with butter (due to the fact it's fat content hurts my stomach) and now use coconut oil, which is easier on me. If you are a butter person then feel free to substitute butter for the coconut oil.

I used pumpkin puree that I had frozen from this past fall. When the sugar pumpkins went on sale I bought a few of them, roasted and pureed them, then froze them in 1/2 c bags. I thawed the bag in the fridge overnight and used it in the recipe.

I got impatient waiting for the sugar glaze to firm up which is why my spice glaze is hard to see. I just wanted to get one of these guys in my tummy asap.

These are so good; it's hard not to eat the whole batch in one day. If you have any left, store in airtight container

Coffee Cake Muffins for Two

I made these muffins when I didn't feel like making our usual Saturday breakfast. I was too tired to make anything complicated, just something easy. I had these muffins bookmarked for awhile, now I finally had the opportunity to make them. I think next time I would sprinkle some walnuts on top or add them into the batter.

These were so good, Mr.Surly was sad to discover I only made 4. So the next time I made this I tripled the recipe, put it in a loaf pan and made coffee cake bread--so freaking delicious.

Oatmeal Crusted Chicken

I am constantly thinking of new ways to prepare chicken. Since raw meat makes me squeamish, I like coatings on chicken when preparing to hide the sight of the raw meat.

I like the idea of an oatmeal coating. I am trying to eat low gluten to help my stomach bloat and I bought rolled oats from Trader Joe’s that claim to be gluten free. Oats are naturally gluten free, but oats are often processed near wheat, and the tiniest bit of wheat will contaminate the oats and be a disaster for anyone with celiac disease.

These oats from TJs claim to be processed in a wheat-free environment. Even if there was a bit of wheat, it wouldn’t affect me since I do not have celiac disease. But for those of you with celiac or a gluten intolerance, these oats might be for you. I know that Bob’s Red Mill also makes gluten free oats.

Anyway, back to the chicken. Regular readers know how much I like the sweet and spicy combo. The cayenne and honey give this chicken that sweet and spiciness that I love. I wanted to eat my entire chicken breast, but my bloated stomach and gastroparesis prevented me. The topping is so good; I wanted to eat it by the spoonful.

Caramelized Apple Peanut Butter Biscotti

I have recently discovered that peanut butter brings on severe GI attacks. I know I'm not even supposed to be eating peanut butter since it's on my low oxalate diet "bad" list but I can't help it. My afternoon snack is an apple with peanut butter and cinnamon. Now I can only eat the apple :( It's frustrating because I experimented by eating a handful of peanuts--nothing; no attack. It's bizarre, and a mystery, what will set off my GI attacks.

Needless to say, I have been craving the apple/peanut butter combo. It took a few days for me to decide to try to make some kind of apple peanut butter biscotti.

It took a few attempts, but I finally tweaked the recipe just right.

White Chocolate Macadamia Biscotti

I’m finally getting around to posting some recipes. I have just been so exhausted and lethargic the past week or two, all I felt like doing was sleep. But this week I’m trying to get caught up in posting. I wish I had an assistant to help me take and edit the photos, as well as type out the recipes and posts.

I love to have some kind of treat with my morning cappuccino. Biscotti is a favorite, so are cookies, date bars, etc. I had some macadamias, and decided to make a biscotti version of the best cookie ever. It took me a few attempts to get the right ratio of dry to wet ingredients, but all the disasters were still delicious, even if they were too crumbly.

These went fast, I had them with my morning coffee and again in the afternoon with some chai tea. Next time I’m going to make two loaves, as even Mr.Surly was a fan.

Blueberry Walnut Pancakes

It’s Friday, which means (for us), tomorrow is pancakes day. These pancakes are a staple for us; I make them almost every Saturday, unless we have fried egg and cheese sandwiches.

Use this recipe as a base recipe. I change up the fruit on occasion, sometimes adding cranberries, sometimes banana, or any other fruit I have on hand. These pancakes are great because they are thick and fluffy. I love the texture of the rolled oats. The spices as well can be changed up based on what you’re feeling. Sometimes, I only add cinnamon because I’m feeling too lazy to grate nutmeg.

Oatmeal Date Bars

I was excited when I saw these date bars while awhile ago. It’s hard to find approved desserts on my restrictive, low oxalate diet, and I absolutely love dates. Browsing the ingredient list I deemed these to be low oxalate as long as I left out the lemon zest.

I did make a few tweaks. I added cinnamon, nutmeg, and ½ tsp vanilla to the date paste. I sprinkled a bit more cinnamon in the flour/oat combo. And I had to leave out the lemon zest. :(

These bars turned out to be really yummy, a bit on the sweet side. Next time, I will decrease the amount to sugar to ¾ c, decrease the flour to 1 c and up the oats to 2 c, because I love oats, but that’s just me. Also, I'd love to add some finely chopped walnuts or almonds to these. Once I'm off the low oxalate diet, I want to try the recipe with these tweaks and ,of course, add in the lemon zest.

Homemade Granola Bars

I’ve had this recipe bookmarked for awhile. I really like the idea of making my own granola bars. I’ve been on a muesli kick for awhile now, and decided it was time to make some granola. I usually keep granola bars in my purse when I have to go to the hospital for doctor appointments and tests, since I’m usually sitting around forever, waiting. I’m in love with the white chocolate macadamia Luna bars. These homemade bars are a much healthier option. I suppose I could have added some melted chocolate to these, but they are so good on their own. They remind me of the Two Moms in the Raw bars they sell at Starbucks and Nordstrom’s snack bar, I love the gojiberry one. Have you ever had one of these bars? They are delicious, and I'm so glad my granola bars taste very similar to them.

I'm glad to have another product that I can now make myself so I don't have to buy a prepacked version. Can you tell I'm obsessed about controlling what goes in my food? When you have abdominal issues, this becomes a must.

Another plus is how easy these are to make. I haven't had much energy the past couple weeks, but these came together rather quickly. These bars were plenty sweet for me, since I don't eat much sugar, but if you like things sweet I'd stir in more (up to 1/4 c brown sugar). I sprinkled brown sugar on top to give the tops of the bars a bit of a sweet, sugar crunch.

Cranberry Apple Walnut Crunch

I know I have talked about how my doctor has requested me to eat lots of sugary, fatty dessert and how I have done my best to follow this. But eating cakes, tartlettes, ice cream, etc gets old pretty fast when you’re eating them every day. Plus, I have to prepare and bake all these treats. Thank goodness it’s now Halloween season. I loaded up on candy and have been snacking on that all throughout the day. I bought one of those fun, plastic jack-o-lantern trick or treat holders, and I keep it on the table beside the couch so it’s near me and I can reach over and eat some candy whenever I want. But this post isn’t about candy, nor my snacking on it; it’s about me finally getting in the kitchen and baking something.

Our weather temperatures are starting to drop to a comfortable mid-70 degrees, so it’s actually starting to feel like fall (at least in the mornings and evenings). Trying to get into the spirit of the season, I thought I’d make some kind of fall-ish dessert. I love cranberries and decided to make some kind of dessert using them. I didn’t really follow a recipe, I just looked at some recipes I had for fruit crisps, cobblers, and crumbles and kind of combined some of them to make this. It turned out so tasty. I wish I would’ve have made some whipped cream or bought some ice cream for topping, that would have made it even better.

Fresh Peach Crisp

I’m not a huge fan of peaches unless they are at their peak seasonally, which is now. Over the weekend the grocery store had locally grown peaches for only 49 cents a pound! I probably bought too many of them. I liked the peach blueberry crumbles I made awhile ago, but wanted to try to make a peach crisp. I found a Cook’s Illustrated recipe that sounded good. These were so delicious, I’m going to make them again this week. I do wish the filling was a bit juicier; maybe mine wasn’t because the original recipe calls for frozen peaches,which when thawed would produce more liquid. But why use frozen peaches when fresh ones are in season? I bet if I omitted the cornstarch I would get more of a bubbly filling using fresh peaches.

Oatmeal Buttermilk Bread

We’re not big bread eaters. Not because we are concerned about counting carbs, but simply because we just don’t eat it. I stopped buying bread because we’d eat a few slices and the rest went to waste (well, I’d just tear it up and feed it to the birds).

Ever since I starting having GI issues I’ve stopped buying premade and packaged foods. Now I make almost everything myself, so that I know exactly what is in the food I eat. This way I ensure there are no surprise ingredients that could possibly cause abdominal distress. Recently, I started making my own bread, slicing it up and freezing the slices, so we can thaw slices as we need them. I found many recipes for bread, and this is far and away my favorite. Most homemade bread is dense and heavy, but this one is so light; I love it. I made this loaf to go along with my curried carrot soup. Whatever was leftover the next day I froze. This bread freezes really well. After slicing, I wrap each slice in aluminum foil before placing them in freezer bags and freezing. This method prevents the frozen slices from sticking together, making it easy to just grab one or two slices as needed. You can make it in a mixer, but I like to knead it out by hand; I find kneading to be relaxing and therapeutic.

Peach Blueberry Crumbles

This week I had peaches to use up along with some blueberries. I love Cook’s Illustrated berry crumbles, but I thought I’d try a new recipe. A quick search on Food Network produced this highly rated Ina Garten recipe. The recipes are pretty similar, a few minor differences, one being more sugar in Ina's topping.

I have a soft skin peeler that I used to peel my peaches. It has a serrated blade that does an excellent job peeling fruit with soft skins, like peaches and tomatoes. I think it would be fine, if you don't want to peel the peach, to just dice up the peaches. I also have this multi grain cereal that I added to the topping to get some whole grains.

Banana Oatmeal Muffins with Walnuts and Chocolate Chips

We go through a lot of bananas each week. I usually eat a banana in my oatmeal at breakfast and Mr. Surly adds a banana to his breakfast smoothie. I detest ripe bananas; I prefer to eat bananas that still have green on the tips, a bit under-ripe. As soon as any brown spots begin to appear on the banana I won’t eat it. Mr. Surly is the opposite--he likes them ripe, no trace of green. We buy our bananas a bit green, and I eat them for about 2-3 days, until there is no more green and brown spots appear; I don’t eat them at that point. Then Mr. Surly finishes off the bunch. If, by the weekend there are any left, I use them up in pancakes.

Well, this past week we ended up with almost a full bunch of overripe bananas. I was in and out of the hospital for various tests my GI doctor ordered, all of them requiring fasting. Therefore, I had to skip breakfast 3 days. As a result I was left with 5 bananas at the end of the week that were brown and dangerously close to becoming overripe; no way Mr. Surly would be able to finish them all. I decided to make some banana bread to use them up. I don’t have a favorite go-to recipe for banana bread, so I went onto Tasty Kitchen to find a highly rated recipe. I saw this was the highest rated one, and it sounded good and relatively healthy. I’m not an avid fan of banana bread (nor do I dislike it), so I can’t really say how this compares to other recipes. All I can say is that they are good; moist, light, and not overly sweet. They tasted even better the next day.

I added ground flaxseed and walnuts for fiber and omega 3’s. I love ground flaxseed; I sprinkle it on and in many things—oatmeal, pancakes, smoothies, most baked goods, etc, so I always have some in my fridge. I wish I had waited to add the chocolate chips to the muffin tins instead of the batter. I fear that the chocolate wasn’t evenly distributed among the muffins; some might have a lot, other muffins just a few. I use Ghiradelli dark chocolate bits, which are larger than chocolate chips and therefore might not disperse as evenly due to their size. If making these again, I would add the batter to the muffin tins then sprinkle an even amount of chocolate chips into each well, ensuring that all the muffins have an equal amount of chocolate (I can’t help it; I’m a Libra and I like things to be even and equal). Of course you could skip this step and simply add the batter to a loaf pan and make bread. Or even better, maybe you aren’t OCD like me and won’t be bothered by one muffin having more chocolate chips than another.

Berry Crumble

I really haven’t done much cooking recently because I have been too sick to eat, let alone cook. I have wanted to post this crumble recipe for awhile, but haven’t because I can’t get a good picture. So here is a half-hearted post with a ho-hum photo. Once I’m better I’ll replace this version with a better post and picture. These are so good; I wish the picture did them justice.

I’m so glad spring is here and the weather is warming up. I love fresh berries and will be making these crumbles a lot. The topping makes too much, and I usually store the remainder in the fridge in an airtight container and make 2 more crumbles the next night. Or, sometimes, I’ll reduce the amounts in the topping to cover just the two crumbles. I left the original proportions in the recipe below.

I had trouble finding 12 oz ramekins. I have some Emile Henry ramekins (I think they are technically called soufflé dishes) that were only 10 oz. After much searching, I finally found 12 oz ramekins at Williams-Sonoma. They are Apilco #3. I had to ask a sales associate for the 12 oz size and he found some in the back for me. I could not find them on the website, but if you go in to the store they should have them in the tableware section with the other Apilco porcelain. Again, I think it may be called a 12 oz soufflé dish. Just look for the #3 on the bottom. Of course you could just divide it among smaller ramekins and have smaller portions if you don’t want to buy new ramekins.

The lemon/lime zest is optional, but it really brightens up the flavor. In the future I may experiment with an orange. I top with either ice cream or freshly made whipped cream. Delicious.